But Rees says the election results gave him a “mandate” to keep drawing, even though he’s not sure he can muster up another four years of the strip. The end of the Bush administration would serve as a good occasion to stop, he figured, and “Get Your War On” could forever stand as a document of the war on terrorism as it was carried out by its founding fathers.
Today, Rees still posts new installments to his personal website on a weekly basis alongside a few other comics he’d started working on in the pre-Sept. 11 world. “Professional crisis” or not, Rees has been hugely successful for an independent cartoonist, and once his flagship strip became syndicated, published, and distributed nationwide, he was finally making a living off of his art.
FROM ALLSTON TO ALL-STAR
It’s a luxury he couldn’t afford when he was living in Boston, working various temp jobs at preschools, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and finally at Harvard Planning and Real Estate, where he was an assistant to the chief financial officer.
“They were busy buying up all of Allston,” Rees said last Friday. “I had just moved from Allston so it was really bittersweet to see these people planning the chess board of taking over this great neighborhood.”
Rees moved to the Boston area in 1994 after graduating from Oberlin College. When he wasn’t working odd jobs for a temp agency, he spent his six years here working on early versions of his current comic strips. At that point, he hadn’t really touched on politics in his artwork—his big projects were “My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable,” a cartoon about ninjas who do nothing but yell at each other and make threats, and its office humor spin-off, “My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable.” Both were based largely on one-liners, and they employed the same clipart gag that made “Get Your War On” so recognizable.
Rees moved to Brooklyn in 2000, where he continued drawing and trying to sell homemade compilations of his strips. He still writes updates for both original comics to this day, and he has added a new, religiously-themed absurdist cartoon called “Adventures of Confessions of Saint Augustine Bear” about a bison, a bear, and a hunter obsessed with killing them.
St. Augustine’s Confessions, the canonical fifth century work celebrating Christianity, “is like the most incredibly awesome book,” he told the audience last Friday, explaining the strip’s inspiration. “So well written. You think Larry David is self loathing? He doesn’t have shit on St. Augustine.”
Rees wrapped up his presentation with a serious talk about landmines in Afghanistan—the issue that got him mad enough to start drawing “Get Your War On” in the first place. He showed the audience a clip of a mine expert locating and defusing a bomb in an Afghan desert, and promoted the anti-landmine charity to which he donates much of his proceeds.
He concluded his talk by telling the audience not to be embarrassed by their elite status as Harvard students. “If ‘elitist’ just means ‘not the dumbest motherfucker in the room,’ I’ll be an elitist,” he said, to loud cheering.
With a book deal, a blank check from the editors of Rolling Stone to write whatever he wants, and a political mind to rival Jon Stewart’s, Rees can most definitely count himself among the elite of the underground humor world. His strips, though somewhat tired in their old age, still manage to capture the same fury that made his first ones so successful.
No matter where he goes from here, Rees has already left his mark on the political humor genre, pushing its boundaries further than anyone before him, and ridiculing his targets with a poison unmatched by any of his competitors.
—Staff writer Leon Neyfakh can be reached at neyfakh@fas.harvard.edu.